Forum:Community Improvement Articles (More Fan Content)?
I wonder if there's a way we can highlight certain articles for "community improvement," beyond just having them show in the wanted pages template. Articles like Jean-Luc Picard, William T. Riker and so forth should be getting more attention and have a lot more development. James T. Kirk is off to a decent start, but still needs development, and his STNV counterpart is woefully undeveloped. Spock needs to be cut down from a Memory Alpha copy, but once that is done, it'll need work. Maybe start a queue of these types of articles and display one on the main page as "This Month's Community Improvement Project." What do you think? --TimPendragon 05:28, 28 October 2008 (UTC) :I like the idea... as long as someone's committed to doing it. As it is, STEU has never really gone beyond a core group of participants/editors - you (Tim), Jrofeta, Scott (Cantabrian), myself when I have time (which I've never enough of these days), a few others. (Don't mean to leave anyone out; no slight intended.) And we all have limited time on our hands, methinks. But it is a good idea, for the reasons cited. Can't think of anything more to say, myself. 21:56, 29 October 2008 (UTC) ::One thing I've been thinking, and this reminded me of it so I'm mentioning it here, is that most everyone on the wiki currently is concerned with adding their own material (me Pendragon, you Arcadia, Jono Swiftfire and so on). There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but surely there's some folks who read other people's fic (like I read Liberty and Argus and some other stuff), and would contribute info from that. Scott and I do, some, and so do some others, but it's limited. We need more articles like Father to the Man. Maybe we should start trying to publicize the wiki with the Trek Writer's Guild, on TrekBBS and other places. Then, maybe some non-writers will show up and add info from stories they've read. --TimPendragon 03:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC) :::I don't know about you guys, but I'm always very wary of going onto a page for somebody else's fic for anything other than an obvious grammar fix or category add, or something of that nature. I'm not comfortable trying to represent somebody else's creative vision...to me it feels like a breach of etiquette. I don't know if others may feel the same way. Creating articles I think other people are going to use, like the work I recently did on Central Command and the Cardassian Guard doesn't bother me the same way because the main shell of it belongs to canon. Also, with characters where there was little established information, it doesn't bother me because I know there's a lot of liberty that can be taken. But going near somebody's original character or ship...that gives me pause. Nerys Ghemor 05:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC) ::::Believe me, Nerys, I understand what you're saying and why it could cause concern. But STEU is designed to be an encyclopedia and database of fan fiction (among other things), and we'd be remiss if we didn't try to catalogue at least summaries of at least some of the thousands of stories online. There's a ton of prolific, popular fanfic out there, and we should be including it. I'm not necessarily suggesting that if you read a fanfic story, you go and nitpick and thoroughly catalogue every character, starship and whatever, but at least, as you read stuff, create a page for that fiction, and include a summary with a link back to the story, as I did for "Father to the Man," a story that I read and loved years ago. Information from that story could then appear on the James T. Kirk page. I guess I'm more thinking about stories written about canon characters than someone's original characters. But by the same token, I've read many Star Trek: Liberty stories, and created the Luciano Mantovanni article, because I was familiar enough with the material to do so. Does that make sense? --TimPendragon 05:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC) :::::I think my big fear is getting the information wrong. Other than sitting with a pen and paper and jotting stuff down while I'm watching a fan film or reading a fan story, I don't tend to be that good at taking notes. And, for some reason, I've not been able to help complete the Star Trek: Of Gods and Men articles I was working on as we can't seem to get it working on any computer we have here in New Zealand (work or home)! :::::Getting that off my chest (LOL), I think, Nerys, we're talking about adding information the authors themselves are not adding here. Star Trek: Hidden Frontier would be an example, as would the series linked to the Star Trek: Unity (crossover) project. I don't think any of us would want to touch something an active participant was doing unless there were grammar fixes as you said. :::::I think Tim's idea is a good one, perhaps even going for a small series or group of articles at a time even. (Again, Sas is right with the limited time part, so it would have to be an achievable task.) --usscantabrian 00:34, 1 November 2008 (UTC) ::::::Word. :-) --TimPendragon 00:59, 1 November 2008 (UTC) :::::::That small series or group of articles is a good one as we could throw in articles and try to cut down the number of redirects to MA. What about some rules for this idea? How would we decide on what article/s to focus on? At the end of the month do we rotate to a new article regardless of the state of the previous? Stuff like that. Of course we could always just go for a trial run and see how we do and work from there. :::::::On publicity maybe we should consider applying for wikia spotlight? We more then meet the requirements. Scott, don't you have some association with TWG? Maybe through you we could open up a channel to TWG and see if we can't create some official ties between us. I'm a fairly regular poster at TrekBBS, and I have posted a link here in a thread dealing with fanfic recommendations in their fanfic forum, but I guess I could also inquire whether it would be okay if I created a topic purely to advertise STEU on there as well. – 14:21, 1 November 2008 (UTC) ::::::::I think the rotation idea is good. It means we're focusing on that project for a while, then moving on to another one (to avoid burn-out). Or maybe we could even have more than one on-the-go at any given time, i.e. three over three months. I'm not sure which would be better. And I would suggest if we decide to "move on", that there's a queue maybe, so let's say month 1's focus didn't get finished, so it gets placed back in the queue, maybe to month 13. (Let's hope there's not that much to do!) But the best suggestion is maybe we should (like you said Jono) take a stab at it and modify it from there. ::::::::Apply for Wikia Spotlight. I think that's a great idea. I see MG is on it already, and, to be honest, I think we have far more interesting and structured content here (no offense!). ::::::::I know Michael and a few of the other guys at TWG, so I can help out there. Do you think I should approach Michael directly, or do you think I should open it up to them on the forums there (and that way, everyone is involved)? Let me know, and I can take action accordingly. --usscantabrian 00:06, 2 November 2008 (UTC)